NU Marketing Association

When I say “marketing,” what is the first thing that pops into your head? Quirky TV ads? Flash mobs? Or big brand names sniping at each other on Twitter? Whatever you think of, there’s no doubt that marketing is a constantly-changing field, and in fact marketing as we know it is the result of years of responding to changing consumer needs and new technologies. To help celebrate the AMA’s Marketing Week, let’s take a look back at how marketing has evolved over the years. 

Outbound Marketing 

When most people think of marketing, they think of traditional, or outbound, marketing: TV commercials, radio ads, billboards, telemarketers, direct mail, the works. If someone is talking at you trying to convince you to buy something, that’s outbound marketing. 

This traditional form of marketing goes back all the way to the 1700s, when magazines first emerged as a medium. By 1839 posters were became such a popular method of advertising that they were banned on properties in London, while the first recorded billboard rental took place in 1867. If there is one overarching thread in the history of marketing, it is that marketing and new technologies go hand in hand. Since its invention in 1922, radio has been used by marketers to broadcast advertisements over the airwaves. As for TV, the first ad aired in 1941 and by 1954 TV advertising was bringing in more money than magazine and radio. By the 1970s, magazines and other print media increasingly felt the competition of new technologies as TV continued to grow and telemarketing became a common marketing tactic. 

When computers took the stage in the 1980s, marketers kept right up and harnessed the ease of desktop publishing to create a boom in print advertising. And of course, with the rise of the internet came the use of email marketing (and its dark side: spam). 1995-97 saw the baby steps of search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) on platforms like Yahoo, AltaVista, and Ask.com. MSN and Google soon followed, with Google introducing its own search algorithm, Adwords in 2000, and Google Analytics in 2005. 

All this new tech was huge for marketing, but it also exposed problems with the traditional method of pushing information out to the public. Email marketing was being abused as spam, telemarketing was getting pushback in the form of the Do Not Call list… The main problem with outbound marketing was clear: consumers just don’t like having products pushed on them. Which is why inbound marketing is becoming the new norm for marketing. 

Inbound Marketing 

The new millennium brought with it the explosion of blogging, and with it the beginnings of content marketing. Instead of talking at consumers, bloggers talked to them and provided content that was actually useful, thereby attracting more like-minded people. And so inbound marketing was born! 

Inbound marketing differs from the traditional method in that it tries to engage and attract customers to a company’s product by sharing valuable information and ideas. The goal is to connect with the audience and build a relationship that benefits both sides. 

Fortunately, it was around this time that getting connected got a lot easier. Social networks came on to the scene in 2003 with LinkedIn and MySpace, soon followed by Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. Google+ tagged on in 2011. E-commerce sales also skyrocketed: in 3 years Amazon’s sales jumped from $10 billion to $25 billion in 2009. 

The trend is clear: consumers want to interact with brands, not just absorb their messages. By 2011, young people spent more time on the internet than watching TV. And with smartphones increasingly dominating the scene, people can stay connected wherever they go. 

Marketing’s response to these new technologies spreading like wildfire? The development of relationship marketing, internal marketing, socially responsive marketing, guerrilla marketing, digital marketing, viral marketing… the list goes on. The internet and social media lets companies connect with consumers in ways that would be unimaginable in years past. And with big data analytics becoming increasingly important and new technologies evolving every day, marketing will likely look very different in the coming years. But as long as there has been media, there has been marketing, and it will be exciting to see what the future holds!

NU Marketing Association